Awards! Awards! Awards!

How exciting is this time of year? I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that Breakwater has taken Gold in both the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories for Canada East at the IPPY Awards. The IPPYs are otherwise known as the Independent Publisher Awards. Some 2500 indie publishers from all over the US, Canada, and overseas submitted more than 5200 total entries to this year’s competition, the 17th annual installment of the IPPY Awards.

I’ve always loved one of my girls more than the other. I don’t think it makes me awful, just human. Floss was always mine—as sweet, airy, and transparent as her candy namesake. Floss was always eager to please, never once cursed at me or told me I had a face on me like a dog. How could she not be my favourite?

Lolly was never mine. She was hard like her own candy namesake, tough and unyielding with an impenetrable shell. I tried to uncover the sweetness in her but she left me before I could find it. Eventually they all left me—first Ray, then Lolly, and then Floss, in such quick succession I could have blinked and they’d all have gone away.

In Baggage, Jill Sooley blends multiple narratives in a heart wrenching and uplifting story of three women drawn by the gravitational pull of fathers and lovers to a place where they’ll ultimately find each other.

Following the death of her husband, Marie Sullivan struggles to repair the bonds that unite her with Floss, her daughter, and Lolly, the stepdaughter she never understood.

After a chance encounter in a cancer ward with her estranged biological father, Floss returns home seeking self-renewal. Instead, she finds a relationship with a recently divorced man whose loyalty to his young daughter threatens his ability to find happiness.

And Lolly, the stepdaughter who never fit in, now shares custody of her own son with her childhood sweetheart, Gabe. How long can she hide the stepfamily she’s taken for granted as she rushes headlong into a romance with a man who has secrets of his own?

An honest and revealing portrayal of modern relationships and blended families, Baggage reminds us that love runs thicker than bloodlines.

Painter Jean Claude Roy first came to Newfoundland in 1966. Travelling to every inhabited corner of the island, he has recorded his personal vision. Painted almost entirely on-site, each image is the story of one day in his life — and one day in the life of a community.

NON-FICTION

Winner, GOLD – Canada East: Fluctuat Nec Mergitur by Jean Claude Roy

I have drawn and painted the Newfoundland landscape since I first set foot on the island in 1966 at the age of 17, as a novice seaman on a French cable ship. I was too young to be allowed to leave the ship unescorted, but one beautiful spring day I escaped with my sketch pad and climbed Signal Hill, and that was the beginning of my attachment to the province… While chatting with another inpatriate Newfoundlander in 2001, I heard the fateful words: “I’ve been to every community on the island of Newfoundland.” At that moment I decided that I would paint every community on the island, and thus began a journey that has ended with the publication of this book. I set out shortly after with my government-issued tourism map, marking off places as I painted them, and adding a few as I went along.

With very few exceptions, these images were painted on site, sometimes in the cold, frequently in high winds. I have had to hang a rock from my easel to keep it steady, tie it to a fence, or, on occasion, put the canvas flat on the ground and paint lying down. The wind dictates the movement on the canvas, the passing clouds alter the light: Being there, for me, is essential to capturing the feeling of the day. Every painting is a page in my diary, and in the diary of the community.

This is neither an art book nor travel book, nor is it a retrospective of my work as an artist. It is not meant to be an accurate depiction of every community. It is a unique story – a love story, really – of a foreigner who thinks he is a Newfoundlander. I have driven and walked all over the island and I have done what I do best in this life – I painted what I saw: the physical and the human landscape. It’s my story, and I’m sticking with it, and I’d be pleased if you would come with me on a trip around the island. — JC Roy